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Monday, 2 March 2015

US officials in Louisiana are investigating how a dangerous and often deadly bacteria got out of a high-security laboratory at a research facility, USA Today reported Sunday.

Authorities told the newspaper there was no risk to the public, though the extent of the contamination remains unknown after the safety breach at the Tulane National Primate Research Center.

The bacterium in question is called Burkholderia pseudomallei.

Primarily found in Southeast Asia and northern Australia, the microbe can spread to humans and animals through contact with contaminated soil and water. It is classified as a potential bioterror agent.

The release possibly came in November or earlier at the center which was working to develop a vaccine against the bacteria

Officials say the pathogen has not been detected at the facility`s outdoor grounds, though four rhesus monkeys kept in outdoor pens became sick, and two were euthanized, USA Today said.

Additionally, a federal inspector became sick after visiting the facility, though it was not clear if she had been exposed to the bacterium prior to her visit, as she had a history of international travel.

Saturday, 28 February 2015

Actress Sonam Kapoor, who has been shooting with actor Salman Khan for Sooraj Barjatya's film Prem Ratan Dhan Payo at Gondal near Rajkot in Gujarat for the last 10 days, has reportedly tested positive for swine flu.

The actress, who was suffering from high fever, was reportedly admitted to Sterling Hospital in Rajkot on Saturday morning.

"Sonam was admitted to hospital for high fever today morning and her blood samples have tested positive for swine flu. Her physical fitness trainer has also tested positive for swine flu," said a source.

Wednesday, 18 February 2015

A case of the Kyasanur forest disease, a viral disease transmitted to human beings through a species of ticks usually found on monkeys, has been reported from the Noolpuzha-Aalathoor colony in Wayanad district. The 18-year-old patient now at the Government Medical College Hospital, Kozhikode, is reportedly out of the critical state.

This is the first time that the zoonotic disease is being reported in Kerala, health officials told The Hindu. The disease has been found in Shimoga, the district where it was first detected in 1957, Dakshina Kannada, Chikmagalur and in Karnataka.

Though a variant of the virus has been identified in Saudi Arabia in recent years, the disease has not been reported elsewhere in the world, according to literature.

The infection, which starts with high fever and body ache, produces a haemorrhagic reaction in the body, similar to that produced by dengue fever, and has a mortality rate of five per cent to 10 per cent.

While surveillance activities have been stepped up in the forest areas on the Wayanad-Karnataka border, no other case has been detected, Wayanad District Surveillance Officer Srikumar Mukundan said.

“We detected the case through active fever surveillance and it was first taken for dengue fever. When the blood test was negative for dengue and there was no response to antibiotics, the samples were sent to Manipal Hospital and the National Institute of Virology, Pune. Both institutes have confirmed it to be a case of the Kyasanur forest disease,” Dr. Mukundan said.

He said the possibility of this viral infection spilling across the Karnataka-Kerala border had been discussed at an inter-State border meeting of health officials of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu about three months ago. An alert was issued to medical officers then.
We were told that the presence of the virus should be suspected if there is a mass death of monkeys anywhere in the forest area. The case now reported seems to be an isolated one, but we have alerted the Forest Department’s range wardens in the district. We are proposing to conduct an awareness class for them,” Dr. Mukundan said.

Information provided by the Indian Council for Medical Research says the virus is a highly pathogenic member in the family Flaviviridae, which causes dengue and yellow fever. The pathogen was named after the forest area where it was first detected in 1957.

Though the virus has been isolated from 16 species of ticks, the species Haemaphysalis spinigera is the major vector.

Monkeys which come in contact with the infected ticks in the forest get the virus and act as the amplifying host. Some small mammals such as rats and shrews are known to act as hosts for the virus. Campers or others passing through the forest get the disease from the bites of infected nymphs of the tick or through contact with the infected monkey or even a monkey which died recently from the infection.

Health officials said that they did not expect more cases because the infected nymphs of the ticks were active through January to May. Once the rains start, the ticks remain dormant in the forest litter. They come alive post-monsoon when the temperature starts rising.

Till now there is no evidence of man-to-man transmission of the virus. The National Institute of Virology has developed a vaccine for the disease and this is available in Karnataka, where in recent years the number of human cases has been going up.

Once infected, timely supportive management is the only treatment modality, as in the case of dengue fever.

Monday, 16 February 2015

Polio vaccine, an entirely artificial one is being developed by a team of scientists to combat polio.

Rather than having a tiny portion of the disease present in the vaccine scientists from the US and UK hope to create a safe vaccine by copying the viral genome.

Researcher Dave Stuart told that The idea of the
synthetic vaccine is that it contains no genome as it's virus free and so it's made, in a way, like a super-chemical, a complicated chemical, that assembles itself to look like the virus but has no way of ever replicating.

Stuart, added that early results with polio are very promising, with synthetic particles being produced and evidence of successful stabilisation.

The scientists hope that by artificially replicating the virus, in effect removing its genetic machinery, they can avoid using a weakened version of the virus in the oral medication used today.

The oral medication provokes a reaction in a small number of cases by the reactivated virus in the patient's gut to pass out of the body and spread to other unvaccinated individuals.

New smartphone accessory capable of diagnosing HIV and syphilis has been developed and successfully field - tested in Rwanda.

The smartphone accessory needs only a finger prick of blood and 15 minutes to detect three infectious disease markers.

Powered by the energy from a smartphone, the device can simultaneously detect three infectious disease markers from only a finger prick of blood. The test takes 15 minutes and is the first instance of a device being created capable of replicating all the electronic, mechanical and optical functions of a lab-based blood test.

The benefits of the new accessory, commonly referred to as a dongle are: The dongle is both lightweight and small enough to fit into one hand. It runs assays on disposable plastic cassettes that contain reagents - the substances required for chemical analysis.

Specific care was made to ensure that the dongle has low power consumption. Power and data are transmitted to the accessory through the standard audio jack of a smartphone, and a power-consuming electrical pump was replaced with a "one-push vacuum" to mechanically move the pre-loaded reagents on the cassettes.

The researchers estimate that the completed dongle will carry a manufacturing cost of $34, significantly lower than the $18,450 cost of the equipment runs typical of this form of diagnostic testing.

Health care workers in Rwanda piloted the dongle, testing the blood obtained from 96 patients seen at disease transmission prevention centers, voluntary counseling or testing centers. The work is published in Science Translational Medicine.

Sunday, 1 February 2015

Infusion pumps that deliver insulin and other drugs have been getting quite advanced thanks to modern wireless technology. Yet, many people around the world simply can't afford even existing pumps.

With this in mind, TouchéMedical, an Israeli firm, is developing a small, cheap, and accurate infusion pump that would be within the budgets of millions of diabetics and people with other diseases treated by drug pumps.

The device has a disposable cartridge that is particularly cheap to manufacture, and a reusable core that contains the actual pump and the electronics to drive it. It includes Bluetooth connectivity to be able to interface it with a smartphone can even send out SMS messages to keep physicians and loved ones informed on how the drugs are being delivered.

Avi Keret of TouchéMedical stresses that he and his inventor son Amir are not reinventing the wheel, rather making it more universally accessible. "Our device gives the same amount of medication as any other pump; it just delivers the drug in a way that allows for a better quality of life," he said.

The device would be especially welcome, he believes, in parts of India and other Asian countries with a rising diabetes rate and a high incidence of thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder often affecting multiple members of the same family. A patch pump is the best solution for administering lifesaving medication continuously, but the high cost forces many of these families to share one device, compromising its effectiveness.

"We'll offer them an alternative," Keret pledges. "People who have or don't have medical insurance will be able to afford it. Children all over the world will be able to use it."

Sunday, 25 January 2015

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have invented a revolutionary device that can significantly lower blood pressure among patients with uncontrolled high blood pressure
The device was developed by ROX Medical and named the 'Coupler'. The device is basically a paper clip sized implant, which is inserted between the artery and vein in the upper thigh, in a procedure lasting around 40 minutes under local anaesthetic.

Scientists led a randomised, blinded endpoint clinical trial with patients from multiple European Centres of Hypertension Excellence - including the Barts Blood Pressure Clinic at Barts Health NHS Trust in east London - all of whom had resistant high blood pressure and had not responded to at least three types of drug treatment.

The team compared the effects of the Coupler versus usual medical treatment in 83 patients of whom 44 received the ROX Coupler therapy. Patients who received the Coupler experienced a significant and durable reduction in blood pressure. There were also a reduced number of hypertensive complications and hospital admissions for high blood pressure crises.

The Coupler also worked well among patients who had failed to respond to renal denervation (another new approach to treating high blood pressure), suggesting the Coupler targets different mechanisms of blood pressure control.

However, patients who had not previously been treated with renal denervation experienced the same level or more of blood pressure reduction. In addition, unlike renal denervation, this new device-based treatment is fully reversible, immediate and pain-free.

Saturday, 24 January 2015

A 44-year-old pregnant woman in Wuhan, Hubei province has reportedly aborted her unborn child after her 13-year-old daughter threatened to commit suicide this past week.

Wuhan Evening News reports that the woman, surnamed Xiao, is a housewife and her husband runs a company. They both decided to have a second child after China relaxed its one-child policy, which now permits couples to have two children if one of the parents is an only child.

"After Wen Wen [Xiao's first child] learned about my pregnancy, she often said she would jump to her death from a building if we kept the baby," said Xiao. "She threw things at home to vent her anger."

Wen Wen later threatened to play hooky, run away from home, skip her senior high school entrance exam and even kill herself.

When Xiao saw cut marks on Wen Wen's arm, she and her husband were on high alert. Afraid of losing their first daughter, Xiao, with the company of her husband, went to a hospital and ended her pregnancy after 13 weeks.